Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

It's ~10% more HPM ~10% more HPS. Not worth the hassle. Flash Heal is the king of priest healing these days.

100% agree.
last raid i did had 2 holy priests, 2 sham, a druid and a pally
So thats 2 chain heals, 2 CoH and 2 PoM, a wild growth and the pallies glyph residual heal (for AoE heals)
Not to mention beacon, binding, riptide

For a damage burst the number of potential heals hitting 1 player is likely to be quite high. So if you are the guy hitting g/heal then quite often your target is only down 20% health (if you are lucky) and that massive heal just isn't needed.

When every healer has multi target healing (ummm - all of them??) then the need for very large heals is way lessened.

I think the idea of everyone taking damage is /yawn design that should be kicked to touch with tank-n-spank. new idea plox :-)
Given it was the bomb back in the day I think the Naxx ideas haven't lasted the test of time - SSC anyone (yeah tell me that sucker was easy with blues and 1/2 T4)

Bottom line: spec no longer matters too much cos content is easy. when healers get tested by hard content then we will see what's what. But of course by then the spells/specs and tweaks of the class are all different. Would Naxx be so easy if healers had really marginal mana regen??

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

I honestly find that I use both Flash Heal and Greater Heal depending on the situation. Both are good spells and both have their uses.

I have always liked holy over disc because of the number of utility spells you gain from holy. CoH, Desperate Prayer(though disc can get this one), GS, and Lightwell (laugh if you want but when its still on CD and you see it disappear its done it job) are all excellent tools.

Something that I have recently proven out is just how useful crit is to a holy priest. I realized a few weeks back that due to holy talents crit improves hps, hpm, mitigation, and mana regen.

hps - crits heal more and cause imp holy concentration procs
hpm - surge of light, holy concentration, serendipity(crits cause overhealing thus causes serendipity to proc more often)
mana regen - because of surge of light and holy concentration it is easy to take advantage of 5 second rule.

Since retooling my gear to be more crit centric, the flow of how holy heals has significantly change for me such that I do not run oom nearly as quickly and I produce a higher hps. It has cause me about 75 spirit and about 3% haste for the 10% crit I have gained.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

I love both the holy and the discipline trees for healing, they both have magnificant points for raid healing. Basically I find this argument pointless. Priests are the only class where two of their trees end in healing specs, love it or role a tree.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

You simply missed the point.
You probably must have seen only the imbaness voices about CoH OP'ness and how holy was awesome cookiecutter PvE healing spec, then respecced to it, and pretended to do it well just because you are holy.

If you don't use PoM, and use FH spam instead of GH stopcasting not allowing you to enter OO5SR, and, add that you don't know to mix it with SoL and HC procs, that COULD allow you to go around 10-15 seconds of mana regen like OUT OF COMBAT, wich can be like 3k mana depending on gear.
If you don't know how to use all these spells, add that probably your holy gear is rather low, of course you find it sucky.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

I'm going to have to agree with the original poster on a few things. I have a priest that use to be my main. I was always shadow but the changes they did to spriest were upsetting so i quit priest altogether and rolled a DK which i love. But anyways i did end up lvling my priest and i tried out both disc and holy. Disc is by far the most fun to play. But i am currently holy cause, I like guardian spirit. But i did notice that they go oom so much. So i actually started specing for mp5 instead of spirit (mostly). Now my mana regen is alot better, ALOT. I tried to work my way around the 5 sec rule but priests are not druids there is no way around it. I noticed now that in raids I outlast alot of the other holy priests, and yes CoH isn't all that great i dont know why alot of priests spam that crap before it got nerfed. But all in all, I'm probably going to end up going disc, it's just alot more fun to play. But holy can be very powerful so I'm not going to knock it, I just think blizzard should come up with something else to help their mana cause spirit really isn't all that great unless your a druid. Granted it does give the holy priest more spell power (if you spec for it) but its not enough imo.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

I've healed as both and never really had mana problems with either. Prolly a bit more with Disc since my gear is all spirit based and not mp5 based. I found Disc healing to be quite boring though, all you do is stand there,renew then if they get low you shield and penance. With Holy I am a bit more active with my healing, watching my 5SR, trying to time your heals to overheal by like.. 50 and it's always fun to get Surge of light/Clearcasting procs.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

odds are your gear choices, gems, and enchants have been made toward disc rather than holy which would leave you gimped as they run on very different theory. Also as the person under your post said flashheal isn't you #1 heal as holy.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

Here a copy of a very informative post on why people are holy from the healing forums. He is comparing flash heal but for the most part this applies to gheal and our other valuable spells as well but you would have to do the talent math to see what degree for each spell:

DIscipline has so few throughput talents that really matter....and all too often those are completely focused on Crit. Divine Aegis is *really* not that good, let's face it. Discpline just does not have talents to compete, and it's made worse because the talents that *DO* increase throughput don't help with Renew, Binding Heal or Prayer of Mending. "

but where it shines is far beyond any healer is mana return
fully raid buffed im over 26k mana and replenishment + rapture means i'm almost close to the point where i can't spend any mana.

the upcoming regen changes make no difference to a disc priest it still means mana is no issue, i can spam FH all day as long as im healing i cant run out of mana.

atm renew is a waste of mana and i never cast greater heal, maybe if i stacked haste higher and FH went under 1 sec, but atm thats only under BL conditions, but i cant see any point going over 15% raid haste, its better to stack spellpower/crit even int is not worth it now my mana is so high.

i think it helps a disc priest never has to use spirit for anything it is one less stat to stack which means when u start capping others fully geared i imagine a disc priest will be very close in hps, while providing mitigation and never having to watch mana or FSR.

infact i think disc mana regen will be nerfed at some point % based returns are a bad idea as at some point you get more back than you spend.

The only annoying thing i find is gear itemisation.
it is very difficult to find gear with no spirit or mp5 on just int/crit/haste.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

Prayer of Mending doesn't proc Holy Concentration, but no matter. Good discussion.

Originally Posted by palamina

the upcoming regen changes make no difference to a disc priest it still means mana is no issue, i can spam FH all day as long as im healing i cant run out of mana.
[...]
infact i think disc mana regen will be nerfed at some point % based returns are a bad idea as at some point you get more back than you spend.

Yeah, I think someone at Blizzard will notice... There wasn't anything in the announced changes so far, but I think that's most likely because they haven't figured out how to change it without ruining PvP. They'll come up with something.

All the int-stacking is so stupid. I really hope they put some more focus back on real regen-stats like spirit and mp5. Int might have been too useless during TBC, but the current situation is also quite odd.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

I played Holy (23/38 i think) at the start of TBC, then switched to shadow and only recently went back to holy a few weeks after hitting 80.

I read a little EJ, but i don't hold too much weight in theorycrafting, healing styles are quite personal imo, there is no one way to gem/gear that is the best for every holy priest.

Anyway, a few things that i wonder about:

Firstly, let me say that i probably fill a different role then most of you, my guilds healers consists of 3 paladins, a shaman, me, and 2 druids. So i am almost always raidhealing.

Whilst raidhealing, gheal is used infrequently, its too slow for raidhealing and i only really use it if the tank is missing a lot of health while the raid is topped, otherwise i'd prefer to toss a few fheals for inspiration before going back to the raid.

Gear/gemming. Haste seems quite overrated for what i do, i think crit is a much more powerful stat point for point, and gemming for spirit seems to be a complete waste of time, my regen is low but i've yet to go completely oom on a fight (incl Sarth 3d). I gem mainly for crit, or power/crit, but i dont neglect haste items, for example i use the sarth 1d robe, since it has more stats and less regen.

Re: Who the hell is holy? And why?

I don't care if a priest is holy or disc in 10 or 25man raids.

In heroics I see a lot of terrible disc priests. Disc priests seem to have a lot more difficulty keeping tanks up during bursty fights.

When I'm tanking on my paladin I love disc priests, because a disc priest + prot pali is a match made in heaven, but I've run heroics as DPS with a warrior MT and a disc priest and it could get sketchy, especially during AOE damage fights.

The AOE bubble disc priests are getting in 3.1 should make up for that though and will make heroics a lot easier on disc priests.

The holy priest I did all my heroics with in the beginning never went oom. His #1 spell is always PoM in raids as well as in heroics, with flash heal being #2 and CoH being #3. He never even has to cast greater heal.

I think a lot of holy priests use greater heal which is TERRIBLE because it's arguably the least mana efficient healing spell in the game, right up their with a druids healing touch :-\